


It Was Always Vergil

by BlueLightningAndNexus



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Mentioned Nero/Kyrie - Freeform, These two don't have a healthy relationship, implied Dante/Lady
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23534080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueLightningAndNexus/pseuds/BlueLightningAndNexus
Summary: For as long as Dante can remember, Vergil's been with him. In some form or another. From when they were children, to experienced devil slayers in their 40s, Vergil was there.This is a freeform story that covers a few of the key details in Dante's life, notably the attack on his house, his first meetings with Lady and Trish, his encounter with Nero, and finally, the climax of Devil May Cry 5.
Kudos: 31





	It Was Always Vergil

Dante is 7 years old, and like all 7 year olds, he has no sense of self-preservation. His mother, a beautiful woman with golden hair and soft blue eyes, spends her afternoons bandaging him up and cleaning his cuts, while Vergil watches from afar, wondering why his mother doesn’t pay half as much attention to him. 

Once she finishes, the two brothers go back outside. They go out to the woods, pick sticks off the dead trees, and swordfight with each other. Whatever fantasy they have varies day by day. Sometimes they’re samurai in ancient Japan. Other times they’re knights and wizards. Occasionally, they’ll play as their father and one of the demons he fought eons ago. For whatever reason, Vergil liked being the demon. He thought it was neat. 

But no matter what, they always make sure to never stray too far from their mother’s watchful eye. 

When Sparda comes home from work, his handsome purple eyes doting softly on his two sons, they ask him questions about how his day was. At night, they insist he tell them a bedtime story, one from his youth as a monster-hunting, demon-slaying knight. He always laughs, and says he’ll tell them when they’re older. 

____________

Dante is 8 years old, and he’s seen what no 8 year old should see. 

His father was killed in front of him, gutted like a fish by a tall, scary demon. He looked like almost a statue, with long wings many times longer than Dante was tall. 

His brother panicked, and ran off into the night. For years, Dante thought he was dead. 

His mother put him into a closet, keeping an eye to her right, looking out for more of Mundus’ demons. 

His only memories of her were as a watchful, caring, clam, patient parent who could do no wrong. In this memory, however, she was scared, frantic, and terrified, as any sane being would be. 

She stroked his cheek, looking into his bright eyes. She could not stop the tears from falling. She knew this was the end. She had no regrets. 

“Dante, remember. I always love you. You’ll have to find a new place to live, take up a new name. Run away from here, get as far away as you can. Don’t look back.”

He could hear her being ripped apart from the closet mere seconds after she left. 

______________

Dante is 19 years old, and the coolest fucker alive. 

Or, at least, he’d like to believe so. 

Once puberty hit, he started getting stronger. Faster. Smarter. He went from foster home to foster home, shrugging off everything around him. After a rather rough car accident, he discovered he could heal from anything--anything--almost instantly.

After a few years at Morris Island staying with a foster mom he particularly liked, he started making a name for himself as a delinquent in town, eventually opening his own shop. Only a few customers would come to him, but even then, they’d pay enough to keep the shop open for a bit longer. 

Puberty hit him like a truck. All of a sudden, he was over 6 feet tall, his snow-white hair soft and silky, his blue eyes softening out like ocean water, and was built like a brick house. His foster mom always joked that he’d have to start beating the ladies off his porch with a stick. He might’ve gotten into a bit of trouble when he was a kid, but he was back on the right side of the law, now with a business and some friends. Relatively speaking, things were going quite good. 

Then, Arkham came into the mix. 

Suddenly, everything went to shit. A girl was there--beautiful eyes, a tomboyish haircut, fair skin, and a glare that could’ve ended Mundus. Mary. Aka Lady. Dante helped her, and she helped him. Only after shooting him in the head. 

A tower rose out of the ground, more demons than Dante had ever seen in his life started coming out in armies, a creepy clown started mocking him at every turn, and among them all...Vergil. 

It was the first time the two brothers had seen each other in years. Vergil never told him where he went. Dante never asked. But their battle was on sight. 

The first time, Vergil nearly killed him, but he also did Dante a favor; unlocking something deep--something powerful--inside of him. 

The second time, it was more of a stalemate, but it wouldn’t last long before Dante was back roaming the castle and fighting more demons. 

The third time, there were no distractions. Everything else--Arkham, Lady, the demons--it was all gone. This time, there was just Dante, and Vergil. 

Dante won. And Vergil? Well, he disappeared into the blackness. 

Dante wouldn’t hear from him again for almost a decade. 

______________

Dante is 28 years old, and standing before his mother. 

Well, not technically his mother, but the spitting image of her. Tall, beautiful golden hair, soft blue eyes. By this point, Dante was making a name for himself. His shop was getting more business each year, and he even had business cards. (“BUSINESS CARDS!” he enthusiastically shouted at Lady after finishing his designs.)

Then, Trish strolled in. 

She had a job for him. The demon asshole who killed his family two decades ago, Mundus, was resurfacing again. She needed someone with muscle to defeat him, and she couldn’t do it alone. Dante was her man. 

Then, she betrayed him. Zapped him with lightning and left him to rot in that musty castle. He stupidly, stupidly went back to save her after Mundus kidnapped her. But none of it mattered. 

The thing that stuck out to him the most, was the knight. 

He was massive--easily 7 feet tall--and decked out in black armor, eyes glowing blue like sapphires. He wielded a two-handed zweihander sword but often used it one-handed. He was the strongest opponent Dante had ever faced. 

After the third time they clashed, Dante managed to kick the helmet off his face. And underneath it…

Vergil. The face that haunted his sleepless nights, with those dead, sunken eyes; that gray, lifeless skin; and the slicked back white hair, now a dirty, ashen color. 

Dante didn’t have a chance to find any answers. Trish was dead. Vergil was dead. Mundus was dead. Everything he touched died, and Dante couldn’t do anything about it. 

He went home and called Lady, leaving his sword behind. 

______________

Dante is 29 years old, and Trish is alive. 

After his fight with Mundus, he went home, talked with Lady. She was the only one he talked to. She was his rock--his everything, the only thing he had left. He didn’t talk to anyone else. He barely left the shop. Stopped seeing clients for a while. 

Then, he got a phone call. 

“Dante?”

That same soothing tone, that same cold but affectionate edge to the way she said his name. It was her. Trish was alive. 

She told him where she was. He drove an entire day to see her. He hugged her like he would any member of his family. Trish was alive. His family was rebuilding itself. 

She tells him everything. After the fight, she woke up and stumbled out of that castle, barely alive, and tried to find him, but he was gone. Went home. 

They stay up, talking for hours, laughing. He makes fun of her for shocking him. She punches him in the arm. 

After one too many shots, she starts getting giggly, and asks:

“Hey, who was that guy back there?”

Dante, immune to the alcohol, raises an eyebrow. 

“Guy?”

“You know, the one with the massive sword? I saw you fighting him. Huge black armor. Someone you fought before?”

He nearly chokes on his own tongue. He averts his gaze quickly. “No, I’d never seen him before.”

Trish drops the subject. Silence ensues. She changes the subject. 

“So...you want your sword back?”

“Nah, keep it. I already have one.”

It’s almost 3 when he starts to drive home. He invites her to come with. She accepts. 

______________

Dante is now 30 years old, and--in the most unexpected turn of events--was in charge of a 9-year old kid. 

Her name is Patty Lowell, and--as it turns out--she’s NOT an heiress. She’s the descendant of a magician. Or an alchemist. Or some shit. They were all the same to Dante anyways. 

But it doesn’t matter. He likes taking care of her, and he has fun with her, even if she is a brat sometimes. Lady and Trish help him when they can, but for a while it’s just the two of them, watching TV and making shitty food and having fun. 

One day, they’re watching some trashy soap opera. It’s in Spanish, but Dante can still understand it; Patty can’t speak or understand shit, so he has the subtitles turned on. It’s late at night, probably about 8 or 9, a couple of hours since dinner. Lady’s over in Michigan hunting down some kind of wendigo demon, and Trish took a job at Chicago to help a few contractors dispel a ghost. The two have matching cream sodas Dante bought them from the gas station, Dante’s almost empty. One of the kids on the show makes a joke, and the two start laughing, when Patty looks up at him. 

“Dante?” she innocently asks. 

“Mhm?” he says, eyes still glued to the TV, going for the final sip of his soda. 

“Who’s Vergil?”

Dante nearly chokes on his drink. He has a coughing fit, eyes slightly misty from the soda going down the wrong way, and she pats him on the back. 

“Are you okay?” she asks, concerned for her caretaker. 

He nods once, then twice. “Yeah, yeah. Shit, that just surprised me.”

He forgets that he isn’t supposed to swear around kids. He prays that she won’t tell Trish. 

“Who is that?” Patty asks again. 

Dante turns the volume on the TV down a couple of notches so he can fully concentrate on the conversation at hand. 

“Uh, Patty? How do you know that name?”

“I saw in your basement?”

Dante raises an eyebrow, unconvinced. “In my basement?”

“Yeah, it was a photo of a boy. He looked a lot like you. On the bottom it said ‘Vergil’. Who is that?”

Dante swallows. After the attack on his house, he went back as a teenager, hoping to salvage as much that remained from the assault as he could. He took a few photos of him and his family, back when he was a kid. He never thought another person would see them. 

Patty looks up at him, those innocent eyes of hers beaming in the light of the TV, and he sighs. She’d never believe anything besides the truth, anyway. 

“That’s my brother.”

“Really?! You have a brother?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“You’ve never told me that!” she said, grabbing the rim of his coat. 

He looks down at her, unconvinced. “Yeah, there’s a reason for that. I never wanted to.”

“Ugh, you’re so weird,” she pouts, crossing her arms and pretending to focus on their soap opera. 

“What does it matter anyways?” Dante says, as he walks over to his trash can to throw away the empty soda bottle. 

“Why don’t you talk about him? He looks just like you!”

“Well, yeah. Vergil was my twin.”

“Twin! You mean to tell me you have a twin all this time, and you never told anyone!”

“No, Patty, I don’t have a twin, I had a twin,” he says. A slight scowl is on his face now, but in the darkness of the living room Patty doesn’t notice. She does, however, notice his specific choice of words. 

“What do you mean you...oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh!”

She turns over to him, looking genuinely apologetic, and sad. 

“I...I’m sorry, Dante,” she says. 

“Don’t be, kid,” he tells her, sitting back down on the couch and sinking into the cushion. “Let’s just finish our show. I can tell you more about him when we’re done. If you want me to, of course.”

“Uh, yeah. Ok.”

After their show, Patty went to bed without asking about Vergil. She never brought him up again. 

______________

Dante is 38 years old, and perhaps getting a bit too old for this. 

He, Trish and Lady were sent on another mission. Some religious group had taken over the island of Fortuna; they called themselves the Order of the Sword. (“Edgy,” Dante remarked upon reading the memo.) Fortuna was a tiny backwater island, isolated from the rest of the world. They practically worshiped his father (which Dante felt...weird about, to say the least), but their leader Sanctus was a total nutjob, obsessed with becoming a demon. By all accounts, this was going to be the perfect mission for Dante: with no one around, he finally had a chance to stretch his legs and get this over with quick. 

And then that fucking punk kid had to come along. 

He looked like how Dante did 20 years ago. Messy, long white hair covering his forehead; piercing blue eyes; tall and fit; a huge sword on his back. The only things separating him from Dante were that 1) Dante would never be so stupid as to wear a pair of expensive earphone while fighting demons, and 2) he wasn’t NEARLY as funny as Dante was at that age. 

The kid called himself Nero. Word on the street was, he was an orphan who’d lived on the island for most of his life. He got himself in over his head, and Dante had to come save him and his girlfriend from Sanctus at the end of the day. Truth be told, Dante didn’t care much for the kid. 

Then, Yamato came to Nero. And everything changed. 

All at once, everything Dante knew about his brother was called into question. The last time he’d seen Vergil was nearly a decade ago. He had no idea if Vergil was still alive, or what happened to his beloved katana during their final fight in the Demon World. All he knew was that the katana was once broken, it was whole again, and this punk was wielding it like he’d had it since the day he was born. 

The coldness in Nero’s eyes suddenly seemed all too familiar to Dante. 

After the whole shebang was over, the kid went and gave his girlfriend a quick hug, before finding Dante again. He held out his demon hand, the katana in his grip. 

“Take it,” he told Dante. 

The legendary demon hunter looked back, and shook his head. “Nah, kid. I don’t need it.” He gestured to Rebellion, strapped safely onto his back. “Already got one, ya know?”

“But Agnus...he said it belonged to Sparda. And you told me that was your dad. It seems like you should have it.”

“Kid, I don’t want it. It’s alright.” Dante approached Nero, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder. It was like looking into the spitting image of Vergil. 

“I...I want you to have it. I think it should stay in the family, ya know? Who knows, hopefully I’ll see you again soon. If you’re ever in town, gimme a call.” 

Dante found himself staring at the boy. There was no other option, right? It was the only way. 

“Hey, old-timer? What’re you staring at me for?”

Nero swatted Dante’s hand off his shoulder, and Dante blinked in surprise. 

“Uh, sorry. You just...you reminded me of someone.”

______________

Now, here they are. 

Dante and Vergil are 44 years old. It’s been over 30 years since that fateful night at their childhood home. 

The two brothers sit on the top of the world, swords drawn. They’re preparing for the final duel. Dante doesn’t know if he’s going to win, or die. He’s not sure he cares anymore. 

“How many times have we fought, Dante?”

Vergil doesn’t sound any different now than when they fought at the tower, 25 years ago. And yet, Dante’s gone through so much--lived through so much. 

“I’m not sure. It’s the only memory I have of us since we were kids.”

“This may be the last one,” Vergil says, holding the newly reclaimed Yamato in his hand, taking a battle stance. 

Dante summons Rebellion to his hand in a surge of fire. “It may be.” 

“I’d be content with that,” Vergil tells him, “should this be our final fight.”

“Me too,” Dante tells him, adjusting his own stance, angling the tip of his broadsword at his twin. “It feels right. You were always there at the beginning, Vergil. And now, you’re here at the end.”

As Dante grips his sword tighter, he instinctively activates his Sin Devil Trigger. In an instant, fiery red wings envelop his back, and scales as hard and touch as armor cover his body. His mouth and face are replaced with a draconic snout. Vergil mimics the gesture. 

“You were the alpha, and the omega,” Vergil tells his brother. “And now, you will die.”

The two charge at each other, ready for the end. Fortunately, their blades never met each other, before the arrival of a certain punk ended things.

**Author's Note:**

> I recently got back into Devil May Cry, and I fell in love with the fifth game. I love how Vergil is called "The Alpha and the Omega," because it has so many interpretations: 1) Vergil was with Dante as children, and now they're together as middle-aged men; 2) Vergil was with Dante in the first game (DMC 1) and now he's at the end; and 3) Vergil was with Dante in the chronologically earliest game (DMC 3) and he's still at the end. 
> 
> I wanted to make an entire fic that would demonstrate how Vergil and Dante's relationship truly is the overarching metaplot of the entire saga.


End file.
